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After pastor Dale Sanders was arrested, he posted a video to his social media accounts asking his congregants to "pray" for his "enemy."

Sophie Cunningham's comments about transgender athletes caused quite a stir in the WNBA world.

Taco Bell Getting Desperate With This Shockingly Cheap Offer Amid "Explosive Diarrhea" Parasite Blowback

Taco Bell is betting a buck can buy back your love.

The fast-food giant rolled out $1 lettuce-free enchiritos - "for the ones who've been riding with us," as the company put it - a peace offering to customers who bolted after a cyclospora outbreak was traced to lettuce served at its restaurants, the New York Post reports. The enchiritos normally run $4.29. Regular nacho fries, usually $2.89, also went to a dollar for orders placed through the company's app.

The deal ran for one day.

The chain, never one to skip a chance at cheeky marketing, hyped it on social media alongside gushing customer testimonials. The dollar deal is "just to show how much we appreciate you," the company cooed on its website.

The promotion arrived the day after CEO Sean Tresvant went on LinkedIn to make a rather different kind of appeal. "We aren't entitled to your loyalty," he wrote Tuesday. "We earn it one meal at a time." He pledged to "be transparent about what we know and what we are doing next." Twenty-four hours later, the company earned it at 77% off.

The Numbers Behind The Discount

Behind the warm and fuzzy promo is a brand in serious trouble.

Foot traffic at Taco Bell's U.S. restaurants fell 20% below its daily average for the year on July 16, according to nationwide data from Placer.ai cited by CNN - before federal officials had said anything publicly. On July 17, when investigators named the chain as part of the probe, it dropped nearly 31%. The next day it was down 30%.

The damage is almost entirely Taco Bell's. Fast-casual and quick-service restaurants as a whole declined just 1.1% and 1.9% respectively on July 17. Chipotle told CNN it is following the investigation closely and does not believe its own sourcing is involved. Shares of parent company Yum! Brands are down roughly 9% from a week ago.

Polling by Morning Consult found the share of diners saying they trust the brand "not much" or "not at all" climbing after the news broke. For a chain that has spent years as the best performer in Yum's portfolio, that is the expensive part - foot traffic returns when the news cycle moves on, and trust does not.

To its credit, Taco Bell moved before it had to. The company pulled all affected Taylor Farms lettuce from its restaurants, with some locations acting before public-health authorities identified the supplier at all.

What The Parasite Actually Does

The bug in question, Cyclospora cayetanensis, is a microscopic parasite that spreads through contaminated fresh produce and unleashes days of misery: severe watery diarrhea, cramps, vomiting, nausea, fatigue and fever.

Just ask Cristy Cooper, who was laid up in a hospital bed after getting sick on June 25.

"This is worse than any flu I have ever gotten. It is just so miserable," she told the Post. "I am worn out from it. I really am."

How Much Of This Is Actually Taco Bell's

Less than the headlines suggest, and that distinction matters.

The outbreak investigators traced to iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell locations covers five states - Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia - and roughly 1,644 reported illnesses.

The national picture is far larger and not one outbreak. The CDC has logged 4,173 lab-confirmed infections since May 1 plus more than 7,400 unconfirmed cases still under review, across 41 states, with 308 hospitalized. Michigan leads in case counts, with Ohio close behind. The agency says it is investigating multiple separate clusters, of which the lettuce outbreak is one, and no source has been established for the rest. Cyclosporiasis cases appear every summer. The CDC's season runs through August 31.

The CDC also excludes "probable" cases from its official tally, which is one reason its numbers lag some states' counts.

The Test That Wasn't

The outbreak drama took a messier turn over the weekend, when the FDA acknowledged that a test appearing to link the outbreak to supplier Taylor Farms was a false positive - and that the batch in question was not even part of the current recall.

Taylor Farms claimed the feds "apologized," a characterization FDA officials flatly rejected while continuing to point at the Mexican supplier as the likely culprit. The agency says there remains "overwhelming epidemiological data supporting the current voluntary recall." Taylor Farms has recalled product distributed to 27 states.

Which leaves a peculiar standoff: a recall with no positive laboratory test behind it, a supplier disputing the terms of its own vindication, and a restaurant chain absorbing the reputational cost of an outbreak most of which has not been traced to anyone. For one day, that cost was priced at three dollars and twenty-nine cents.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 22:10

The actor has been married since 2018 and has two daughters.

The actor has been married since 2018 and has two daughters.

Fried, a surprise to even be on a major league mound after only one brief rehab start, showed no rust over five excellent, scoreless innings.

Max Muncy broke two ties with one swing on Wednesday night.

Woolsey led the spy agency for two years under former President Bill Clinton – making him perhaps the highest-ranking government official to have been afflicted by the mysterious ailment. 

A frequent boater on the Ohio waterway where five people drowned Sunday may have captured the last photo of the ill-fated group alive.

House Passes Defense Policy Bill That Attaches SAVE America Act

Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times,

The House of Representatives on July 22 passed a $1.15 trillion defense policy bill that attaches a key election integrity bill championed by President Donald Trump.

The tally for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was 216–212.

Six Democrats crossed the aisle to back passage of the bill, while six Republicans - among them Reps. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) - opposed the bill.

Amendments introduced by Republicans were voted on late on July 21; some of them passed and some were rejected. One amendment that passed was cutting the defense budget by 0.5 percent if the Pentagon fails an audit. The amendment, which passed by voice vote, cut funding that would go to the Treasury Department. Exempted from the amendment are military personnel, reserve personnel, National Guard troops, and Defense Health Program accounts. The Pentagon failed its eighth consecutive audit in 2025.

With the final vote, Republicans agreed to attach their election integrity bill, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, to the defense measure following its passage. House Republicans have attached the SAVE America Act to other major bills passed this month by the lower congressional chamber and forwarded to the Senate.

The House passage comes a week after Senate Democrats blocked a procedural vote to advance the NDAA in the upper congressional chamber. The tally was 50–46, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) switched his vote from yes to no so that he could again bring up the motion to invoke cloture, which requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.

The Senate Armed Services Committee advanced the bill to the Senate floor on June 11 in a bipartisan 18–9 vote.

However, Republicans and Democrats failed to agree on top-line defense and non-defense spending levels, creating tension between the two sides.

Democrats cited the resumption of the war in Iran as a reason for their opposition to the procedural vote.

“Now the White House has formally notified Congress that hostilities have resumed, that American strikes are underway again and our forces remain positioned for more,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the floor before the vote.

“Yet Republicans want the Senate to take up the NDAA, the defense bill, as though none of this is happening.”

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said the vote was unprecedented.

“It’s unprecedented not to pass the motion to proceed on the NDAA, and it reflects a decision and a mindset on the part of ... Schumer not to cooperate at all because so much of this has been done on a bipartisan basis,” he said.

“It really is a new low.”

The $1.15 trillion measure would allocate almost $1.1 trillion to the Department of War, more than $41.14 billion to the Energy Department to manage the nation’s nuclear arsenal, and $11 billion to other defense-related activities.

The NDAA includes a 3.6 percent pay raise for all military members.

It would also fund educational agencies affected by the enrollment of military and Department of War civilian dependents.

Many House conservatives have for weeks pushed for House leaders to put pressure on the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act.

The legislation is highly favored by President Donald Trump, who has called it a “common sense” measure to require photo ID to register to vote and ensure that only eligible voters cast ballots.

Critics of the bill say that it would make it harder to vote, imposing strict requirements that would require most Americans to have either a U.S. passport or a copy of their birth certificate to vote.

Democrats in the Senate have vowed to oppose the bill, and its prospects with the upper chamber’s Republicans are unclear.

In view of these difficulties, Republicans are also pursuing passage of a grant-style program that would provide rewards for states that pursue programs similar to the SAVE America Act.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 21:45

Saul Martinez, 22, has been charged with murdering his 3-year-old son, Joseph, before stuffing the boy's body in a suitcase and ditching it near a river over the weekend.

Sabrina Ionescu’s late-game heroics propelled the Liberty to a 95-94 win against the Chicago Sky to help them enter the All-Star break on a good note. Ionescu scored 12 of her team-high 29 points in the fourth quarter, going 4-for-5 from the field with three 3s in the final 10 minutes.  Then, Jonquel Jones sealed...

Making another start with dreadful run support from the Aaron Judge-less lineup, Cole retired the first 14 batters he faced, en route to throwing a season-high seven innings and 11 strikeouts, but the 35-year-old’s dominant showing couldn’t help the Yankees overcome a 5-3, 10-inning loss to the Pirates in The Bronx.

Shaquille O'Neal is weighing in on LeBron James’ NBA destiny.

A trio of Los Angeles sneakerheads — including the owner of a popular Melrose Avenue shoe boutique — were hit with federal charges as part of years-long investigation into a sophisticated Nike cargo theft ring. The suspects were among 12 people accused of stealing a staggering $2 million worth of Nike shoes from the company’s...

April Watson’s bid to become the Town of Jay’s manager was left in limbo after she was nabbed during a “sex offender registry violation roundup” by the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office on Monday.

Once inside, he ripped the workers, calling their bizarre behavior unsanitary — to which the employee playing hair stylist callously responded, “do you see me cooking?”

Deutsche Bank: Humanoid Robot Market Accelerates Globally As China Ramps Production

The latest "Humanoid Robot Pulse" report from Deutsche Bank states that the global humanoid robot market is accelerating, with China, unsurprisingly, leading the race.

"The humanoid robot market is accelerating globally. China is leading in production, with government officials estimating 100,000 units of humanoid robot production in 2026, significantly higher than our expectation of ~40,000 units," analyst Iris Zheng wrote in the report.

The Hong Kong-based Deutsche Bank analyst specializes in Asia-Pacific automation and industrials, providing clients with key updates across the industry:

1. Activities in the US stepping up: Agility going public through SPAC by 4Q26; Meta acquiring an embodied AI model startup; OpenAI recruiting robotics engineers; and NVIDIA expanding its robotics team in China.
2. Continuing developments in China: AGIBOT accelerating production; updates from BYD and Li Auto on robotics; Alibaba unveiling robotic models; and Kepler undergoing acquisition.
3. Policy updates: China to produce 100,000 humanoids in 2026; Shanghai to deploy 100,000 humanoids by 2030; the US could restrict Chinese robotics; and Japan to deploy 10mn AI robots by 2040.
4. Use case: Livestreaming of humanoids working in factories and warehouses by AGIBOT and Figure.
5. Emotional companion: Bionic humanoids from UBTECH and DOBOT.

More color here:

In the US, Agility Robotics utilizes a 75% locally sourced supply chain and aims to reduce the bill of materials (BOM) cost from US$125k currently to US$30k.

AGIBOT and Figure AI have livestreamed their humanoid robots working in factories and warehouses, demonstrating commercial viability.

How to profit:

This rapidly developing market indicates growing component demand, which bodes well for component manufacturers. Within our APAC Industrials coverage, we prefer Hengli (Buy, closing price RMB110.58), Shuanghuan (Buy, closing price RMB42.39), Harmonic Drive (Buy, closing price ¥7,430), and Yaskawa (Buy, closing price ¥5,490). We also highlight Tesla (Buy, closing price US$394.46) and Mobileye (Buy, closing price US$9.43) (through Mentee Robotics) as humanoid robotic OEMs in the US.

The rise of physical AI has prompted Blackstone, the world's largest alternative asset manager, to place a major bet on Futronic, an automotive supplier that has adapted its motion-control technology for use in actuators for humanoid robots.

Related:

• Automakers Race Into Humanoid Robots As Timeline For Blue-Collar Job Disruption Emerges

Professional subscribers can read a lot more on humanoid robots at our new Marketdesk.ai portal. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/22/2026 - 21:20

Livvy Dunne stole the show at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday.

The LeBron James free agency saga has yet to reach its denouement, and the latest report reveals the reason for the delay. James is reportedly “slow-playing” his decision to see if a suitor can trade for Anthony Davis or Kyrie Irving, according to Yahoo Sports writer Kevin O’Connor. LeBron James and Anthony Davis won an...